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Tuesday, 05/22/2018 12:53:17 PM

Tuesday, May 22, 2018 12:53:17 PM

Post# of 63558
Could this be our cell??? Management says "ongoing manufacturing costs would be 40% lower with NGT......but say 3 times the capital efficiency. Finger crossed that something is in play.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/4-things-learned-sunpower-apos-153200106.html?.tsrc=applewf


The next-generation technology (NGT) solar panel SunPower has been developing will begin meaningful production late in 2018 and could have a big impact on the company's financials when it fully ramps up. The solar panels won't be much more efficient at turning sunlight into electricity than the current X-Series panel's 22% to 23% efficiency, but it'll be much more cost effective. Tom Werner, SunPower's CEO, put it this way: 

NGT will enable SunPower to produce our industry-leading IBC [interdigitated back contact] solar panels with cost similar to commodity products, utilizing manufacturing equipment with around 3 times the capital efficiency of our previous generation technology.

There are two areas in which SunPower is pointing out lower costs here: capital cost and ongoing manufacturing costs. 
SunPower didn't outline exactly how much NGT equipment would cost, but the plant housing X-Series production cost about $0.65 per watt of manufacturing capacity. In other words, a $100 million investment would build 154 megawatts (MW) of capacity. If NGT manufacturing is three times as efficient, then the cost of each watt of capacity should be between $0.20 and $0.25 -- and $100 million would build about 462 MW of capacity. This would make expanding production much more cost effective for SunPower. 
Management also said that ongoing manufacturing costs would also be 40% lower with NGT manufacturing, and the NGT panels will be "highly margin accretive" to SunPower